Bristols Illuminati or city benefactors? Society of Merchant Venturers A Force for Good Bristol Post

Bristols Illuminati or city benefactors Society of Merchant Venturers A Force for Good Bristol Post Jun 2021

Bristol.Live - "The idea that we are some kind of secret society, secretly controlling things is just nonsense"

Where’s the accountability for the Merchant Ventures who blocked, white washed, and obstructed for so long until the public took matters into their own hands? Why does it only say “a member”, name and shame.

Staff challenge University of Bristol on links to Society of Merchant Venturers
They also want honorary degrees for the so-called 'Colston 4'

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/staff-challenge-university-bristol-links-6587529
Tristan Cork Senior Reporter 2 FEB 2022
Updated 3 FEB 2022
Lecturers and staff at the University of Bristol have called on the university to ‘fundamentally reconsider’ its ties with the Society of Merchant Venturers.
The Bristol University branch of the University and College Union said the university should also reconsider the links between the university and the schools in Bristol that are run by the Society.
In response, the university has strongly defended its ties with the Merchant Venturers, which date back to the setting up of the university more than 100 years ago, and both organisations said they were ‘proud’ to co-sponsor the Venturers Trust group of academy schools.
In a list of requests to the University of Bristol, the UCU also called for work to ‘decolonise’ the University of Bristol’s buildings and logo to be completed.
And the staff union also said the Colston 4 - the four people who were found not guilty of their part in the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in June 2020 - should be given honorary doctorates from the university.
But the most fundamental call from the UCU relates to the relationship between the University of Bristol and the Society of Merchant Venturers, which dates back to the founding of the university in the 1900s.
The calls from the UCU for the university to examine its links to the Society of Merchant Venturers come in the same week Bristol Live revealed that two of Bristol’s four MPs had explicitly called for the Society as an organisation to disband, and a third questioned their accountability.

What did the UCU say?
A statement from the Bristol UCU said: “Bristol UCU applauds the verdict in the Colston 4 case. We believe that the statue should never be displayed in the city again, outside of a museum.
“We call for Bristol University to complete the decolonisation and ‘De-Colstonisation’ of its buildings and logo and to fundamentally reconsider its ties with the Society of Merchant Venturers, including those under the auspices of widening participation via their network of academy schools.
“We would like to nominate all of the Colston 4, and their legal team, for a collective honorary degree as soon as possible.
“We will be making formal applications for honorary degrees for the Colston 4 and their legal representatives when the next round is opened,” they added.

Ties between university and the Merchants
The university was largely founded by the Wills family, who had made their fortune in the tobacco industry, and the Fry family, but the Society of Merchant Venturers also played a key role in setting up and overseeing the university - which continues to this day.
The early origins of a university in Bristol began in the last quarter of the 19th century. The Wills and Fry families supported a University College and were keen to get a royal charter for a full university in Bristol.
The Society of Merchant Venturers ran a separate college - its origins dating back to 1595 - called the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College, and over the first years of the 20th century, as the University of Bristol gained its royal charter in 1909, the Merchants’ colleges merged with the Wills’-funded colleges to form the university.
When Bristol Live asked what the links between the two organisations referred to by the UCU were, both the university and the Merchants talked about the Venturers Trust project.
But in statements sent in response, neither mentioned the presence of members of the Merchant Venturers in the upper echelons of the university’s hierarchy.
The Wills Memorial building at the University of Bristol (Image: Sophie Grubb/ Bristol Live)
Today, the University of Bristol is overseen by a Board of Trustees - and that always traditionally contained a significant number of trustees who were also members of the Society of Merchant Venturers (SMV).
In just the past few years, the number of Merchants on the board of the University has declined - it had close to half the trustees as recently as 10 years ago, but now just two members of the board are also Merchants.
They are Mohamed Saddiq, who is the deputy chair of the Board of Trustees, and also one of six on a Nominations Committee who appoint the independent trustees.